When a spill of hydrocarbons, such as oil, or other polluting chemicals (hereinafter referred to as polluting chemicals) occurs in a marine environment, some components of the spill, particularly oils heavier than No. 5 or other substances with a specific gravity or density higher than water, or mixtures or emulsions of these substances, will silk and settle on the bed of the body of water or become suspended in the water column, either quickly, or over time. The prior art discloses numerous methods for recovering polluting chemicals from the surface of a body of water, however, there is no suitable apparatus for recovering polluting chemicals that have settled on the bed of a body of water. It may be desirable to remove the settled polluting chemicals from their subsurface resting place or from the water in order to recover them, prevent them from entering submerged supply and/or process water intakes in the area and contaminating these water supplies, or to prevent surface recontamination resulting from components of the submerged polluting chemicals escaping back to the surface over time.
In the past, when it has been deemed desirable to recover submerged polluting chemicals, a diver has collected the polluting material by hand, or by use of hand tools and carried the material by hand to the surface for collection, or been provided with a skimming pipe and nozzle, connected by hose to a pump, to collect the subsurface polluting chemicals and pump them to the surface where they may be processed for recovery purposes or otherwise disposed of. The use of divers for this purpose is subject to several problems. First, diving operations are inherently hazardous and the minimization of their use during oil spill recovery operations reduces the hazard to personnel. Second, the risk of diving operations increases as the depth of the operation increases. Third, the diver can only spend a limited time below the surface, which prolongs the recovery operation and/or presents a considerable manpower burden upon operations. Most importantly, when walking on the bed of the body of water, the diver will disturb the polluting chemicals and either cause them to rise and obscure his vision, move them from their then present position, or drive them into the bottom sediments where they are more difficult to detect and recover.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,831,387 discloses an apparatus designed for the recovery of oil from sunken vessels. The apparatus is lowered from a ship and is latched onto the sunken vessel containing the oil. The apparatus pumps the oil through a pipe to either a storage chamber within the apparatus or to a ship on the surface of the body of water. The apparatus does not have the ability, however, to recover oil that is settled on the bed of a body of water or that is widely distributed and not confined to a container such as a ship. In the case of an oil spill wherein the oil is disassociated from a storage container or ship and settles on the bed of a body of water, the apparatus is of no use.